In second debate, Gibson starts attacking Schreibman

Rep. Chris Gibson, R-Kinderhook, took the gloves off in Thursday night’s debate at the WMHT studios in this Troy suburb, answering his Democratic challenger Julian Schreibman’s attacks on some of his votes over the last two years by challenging him to ante up.

“My opponent, incredibly, is running a nasty and negative campaign…and he really has not come forward with any plans,” Gibson said after the hour-long televised forum, where I was part of a panel of journalists who asked the men questions.

Answered Schreibman: “This is part of the effort to distract from the fact that he’s the incumbent with the voting record that he refuses to talk about…His entire campaign is built around pretending that he’s running for the first time and tat he hasn’t spent the last two years accumulating a record that is entirely out of step with the voters of Upstate New York.”

The men re-clashed on several issues. Schreibman, a Kingston attorney who has worked as a county and federal prosecutor, attacked Gibson’s vote for the 2011 Republican budget plan. It would have converted Medicare from a fee-for-services model into one of premium support, where enrollees are given a certain subsidy to purchase private insurance. This extends the life of the program — which is projected to be insolvent in 2024 — but shifts ultimate liability for care to patients.

Schreibman did not offer a specific plan during the debate, but afterward said he would push for care to be delivered on a “best value” basis and allow Medicare to negotiate bulk pricing with prescription drug companies. Gibson seized on this, retorting his statements hadn’t been scored by the Congressional Budget Office. He said he voted for the 2011 budget as a “conversation starter.”

The two men fenced over who would be more apt to work across party lines in their answers to questions about the expiring farm bill and coming “fiscal cliff,” which will arrive in January when several automatic spending cuts and expiring tax breaks come to arrive. Schreibman attacked Gibson for his membership in a House Republican majority that, in two years, has been recalcitrant to compromise with Democrats on major fiscal issues. Gibson cited rankings by the Washington Post and National Journal to argue he was a moderate.

Schreibman has always been running sideways, so to speak, offering a minimal platform and instead trying to shape the campaign around several issues or votes that, political operatives know by polling, skew in their favor. Schreibman even said during tonight’s contest: “My campaign rests entirely on folks knowing the truth about the congressman’s record.”

Gibson is essentially calling him out on it. Will it work? We’ll have to see.

Finally, Gibson, a freshman congressman who retired in 2010 after a 24-year career in the U.S. Army, had an especially cutting closing statement when he asked who voters who they could trust: a “New York City lawyer” or “a combat veteran.”

One last point on style. Schreibman did an outstanding job of speaking at a measured pace and looking directly into the camera, which I could see on the monitor looked natural for a viewer. Gibson, by contrast, was looking at his questioners and the audience, at times appearing to look away for a viewer at home.

But unlike the last debate, the congressman remained more even-tempered. He became visibly wound up during the last forum. And it seemed Republicans did their advance work in packing the small audience with sympathetic souls — three times during the debate they laughed when Gibson landed a zinger on Schreibman, something that I assume was also audible for viewers at home.

Here’s video I shot after the debate wrapped up of both Gibson and Schreibman. The two men are vying to represent the 19th Congressional District, which includes the mid-Hudson Valley and Catskills as well as parts of Rensselaer and Montgomery counties.